A city can change its rulers, language and public rituals without losing the layers that made it distinctive. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s new exhibition, ‘Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires’, opens to the public in London on Saturday, 7 November, bringing together more than 200 objects across sixteen centuries. Rather than treating Byzantine and Ottoman art as separate museum subjects, the exhibition follows one imperial capital through changing forms of belief, patronage, trade and everyday life.
One city, two imperial histories
The exhibition begins in AD 330 and ends in 1922, the span the V&A uses to tell the story of Constantinople and Istanbul as the capital of two successive empires. The city was the imperial and religious centre of the Byzantine world from its refounding under Constantine, then became the Ottoman capital after the conquest of 1453. The museum’s framing is deliberately urban rather than purely dynastic: it asks what was made in the city, who commissioned it, how it was used and how artistic ideas travelled beyond its walls.
That approach matters because Byzantine and Ottoman objects are often encountered in different historical or religious categories. The V&A says the exhibition brings two traditions usually kept apart into a shared account, while curator Tim Stanley has described the opportunity to show both collections on their own terms. The point is not that the empires were interchangeable, or that conquest erased difference. It is that a single place generated distinct cultural traditions whose histories also intersected through buildings, workshops, patrons, diplomacy and the movement of people and goods.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · About the Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires exhibition · Actually, You Can Go Back to Constantinople. A Landmark Exhibition Reconstructs the Imperial City With 1,600 Years of Treasures From Byzantine and Ottoman Times · Victoria and Albert Museum to bring Istanbul to London in upcoming exhibition · In Conversation With… Tim Stanley, Curator of Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires at the V&A
A 1,600-year story told through objects
More than 200 objects are arranged across four main sections. The material ranges from silks and historical dress to ceramic tiles, mosaics, tableware, precious metalwork and jewellery, sculpture, architectural furnishings, manuscripts, works on paper and paintings. The V&A also draws on loans from institutions in Istanbul and elsewhere, alongside its own collections. That mix is central to the exhibition’s proposition: imperial history is made visible not only through monuments and rulers, but through the objects that circulated in churches, palaces, homes, markets and public ceremonies.
The section labels require a small clarification. The V&A’s 4 November press release calls the Ottoman-focused third section ‘A Capital Reborn’; its visitor guide, updated on 6 November, calls it ‘Power and Reach’. Both descriptions concern the court’s use of visual spectacle and luxury materials to express authority. The other current guide headings are ‘Roman Beginnings’, ‘Heaven and Earth’ and ‘Life in the City’. The difference appears to be a change in the museum’s published wording, not a change to the broad chronological journey described by the exhibition.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · About the Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires exhibition · Actually, You Can Go Back to Constantinople. A Landmark Exhibition Reconstructs the Imperial City With 1,600 Years of Treasures From Byzantine and Ottoman Times · Victoria and Albert Museum to bring Istanbul to London in upcoming exhibition
From Roman foundation to Byzantine sacred art
‘Roman Beginnings’ looks at the city’s refounding by Constantine as an eastern imperial capital. The V&A highlights the infrastructure that supported its growth, including water systems and fortified walls, as well as the Hippodrome, where chariot racing became a public spectacle with political meaning. Objects and fragments associated with early palaces, churches and ancient monuments show how the new capital drew prestige from the wider Roman world. A fragment of the Serpent Column, originally erected at Delphi, connects the city’s urban centre with a much older Mediterranean history.
‘Heaven and Earth’ turns to the role of art and architecture in Byzantine religious life. The section considers how sacred imagery could express imperial authority while artists and patrons continued to draw on classical forms. Reliquaries, icons, manuscripts, jewellery and textiles help place Hagia Sophia within a wider material culture rather than treating the building as an isolated architectural wonder. A notable loan is the illustrated Lincoln Typikon, a fourteenth-century manuscript from a Constantinopolitan convent, which the V&A says is being shown publicly for the first time in more than sixty years.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · About the Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires exhibition · Actually, You Can Go Back to Constantinople. A Landmark Exhibition Reconstructs the Imperial City With 1,600 Years of Treasures From Byzantine and Ottoman Times
Ottoman patronage and the language of power
The Ottoman chapter begins with the political and cultural transformation that followed the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The exhibition examines how the court used clothing, ceramics, furniture, metalwork, jewellery, armour and paintings to project authority in both peace and war. One of its most recognisable works is Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Sultan Mehmed II, on loan from the National Gallery. The National Gallery dates the painting to 1480; the V&A’s press release gives 1479, so the lender’s catalogue provides the clearest object-date reference for readers.
Other loans show how luxury and diplomacy were intertwined. A sixteenth-century kaftan associated with Sultan Selim II is woven from an especially prestigious Ottoman silk known as zerbaft, or ‘woven from gold’. The exhibition also includes the four-metre Pallium of St Lawrence, a thirteenth-century Byzantine silk textile presented to Genoa by the future emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261. Together with an elaborate Ottoman procession scroll, these works suggest that textiles could carry religious meaning, record ceremony, signal rank and help sustain relationships across the Mediterranean.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · Gentile Bellini | The Sultan Mehmet II | NG3099 · Actually, You Can Go Back to Constantinople. A Landmark Exhibition Reconstructs the Imperial City With 1,600 Years of Treasures From Byzantine and Ottoman Times · In Conversation With… Tim Stanley, Curator of Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires at the V&A
The city beyond its palaces
‘Life in the City’ shifts attention from imperial courts to the social spaces and varied communities of nineteenth-century Istanbul. The V&A describes a cosmopolitan centre shaped by different languages, faiths and artistic traditions, with objects that evoke coffee houses, bathhouses, music, leisure, fashion and performance. Dress and domestic items sit alongside paintings and architectural details, giving the visitor a view of how the city was inhabited as well as governed. The section also considers changing tastes as Parisian and other European influences became more visible in local fashion and design.
The final movement looks outward again, tracing the influence of Byzantine and Ottoman art on nineteenth-century Europe through prints, textiles and mosaics in the V&A collection, including work by Owen Jones and William Morris. The museum’s curatorial story therefore does not end at the city’s political boundaries. It follows forms, motifs and techniques as they were adapted elsewhere, while the exhibition’s objects from Istanbul and international lenders make clear that the city’s cultural life was never sealed off from wider networks of exchange.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · About the Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires exhibition · Actually, You Can Go Back to Constantinople. A Landmark Exhibition Reconstructs the Imperial City With 1,600 Years of Treasures From Byzantine and Ottoman Times · 'Window into the other half of Europe': London exhibition reveals Istanbul’s rich history
A UK-first exhibition, open through May
The V&A presents the show as the first exhibition in the UK to tell the full story of Constantinople and Istanbul as the capital of both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. The Art Newspaper reported the same UK-first claim when the exhibition was announced, describing its scope as the city’s 1,600-year history through art and culture. Senior Curator Tim Stanley and Project Curator Bella Radenović lead the exhibition. It is presented in partnership with Koç Holding, with support from the Huo Family Foundation; the foundation’s interview with Stanley also records the curatorial aim of giving the museum’s Byzantine and Ottoman holdings a fuller context.
The exhibition is at V&A South Kensington, in Galleries 38 and 39, from 7 November 2026 to 9 May 2027. The museum lists tickets at £25 on weekdays and £27 at weekends, with concessions available and advance booking recommended. Members’ access should be distinguished from the public opening: the V&A scheduled Members’ Preview Days for 5–6 November and separate Members’ Morning View sessions for 7–8 November, from 08:00 to 10:00. The distinction matters because the weekend morning sessions are not the same event as the earlier preview days.
Sources: V&A opens exhibition celebrating a millennium and a half of art and culture from Istanbul · Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires · About the Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires exhibition · Members' Morning View: Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires · Victoria and Albert Museum to bring Istanbul to London in upcoming exhibition · In Conversation With… Tim Stanley, Curator of Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires at the V&A · Members' Preview Day: Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires
